President Donald Trump has long complained that “we don’t win wars anymore,” a problem he has blamed on “wokeness” and “political correctness.” Last year, he set out to do something about it by rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War. His secretary, Pete Hegseth, eagerly supported the change, contending that the department would “fight to win” and wage war with “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.”
How’s that going? The president just concluded a war with Iran, and the only people who think the United States won are on the administration’s payroll. Even some of them probably harbor secret doubts. That may be why Secretary of State Marco Rubio is letting Vice President JD Vance take the lead in selling this dog’s breakfast.
Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, denounced the memorandum of understanding with Iran as “appeasement.” His former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley called it a “huge mistake.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that “giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea.”
The howls of outrage are especially loud among Israelis, many of whom feel betrayed by a settlement that aims to curtail the Jewish state’s actions against Hezbollah but does nothing to cut off Iranian support for Hezbollah. David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel, describes “Trump’s deal” as “a catastrophic capitulation.”
I share much of that anguish, but I’m not sure there was a better alternative.
The critics are right that the deal is a sellout. Under the memorandum of understanding, the U.S. pledges to remove its “naval blockade” on Iranian shipping, to “issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil,” to “make fully available” frozen Iranian funds, to facilitate at least $300 billion “for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” and “to terminate all types of sanctions … in an agreed-upon schedule as part of the final deal.”
Iran, in return, hardly gives anything. It simply “reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons,” a pledge it has made and broken for decades. It also commits to “downblending” its 11-ton stockpile of enriched uranium but not necessarily to handing it over to another country. The regime will also allow “safe passage of commercial vessels” through the Strait of Hormuz, while reserving the right after 60 days to charge for what had been free before the war started.
It’s little wonder that Iran claims to have won. After bombing the country for 40 days (Feb. 28-April 8), Trump achieved considerably less than President Barack Obama did with his nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, after not bombing Iran at all. The 2015 agreement forced Iran to send 98 percent of its enriched uranium stockpile out of the country and limited its future enrichment to 3.67 percent for 15 years. Not until international inspectors had verified compliance did the Obama administration relax nuclear sanctions while keeping others in place. Trump, by contrast, is giving Iran a huge financial windfall simply for negotiating about its nuclear program.
Granted, the $300 billion reconstruction fund is likely vaporware. It’s doubtful the Persian Gulf states that Iran just bombed are going to donate to its reconstruction. But Tehran is due to get $24 billion in frozen assets. The sanctions waivers, combined with the possibility of the regime charging tolls (disguised as “user fees”) on the Strait of Hormuz, will be worth tens of billions of dollars more annually to the mullahs.
That money is likely to be used to rebuild Iran’s battered military capabilities and to increase subsidies to Hezbollah. Trump is, in essence, empowering the hard-line regime he vowed to overthrow and relaxing the pressure meant to end its nuclear program. There is no suggestion anymore of ending its missile program or subsidies for terrorist groups. Indeed, Trump is defending Iran’s right to field missiles and enrich uranium.
And yet, bad as this deal is, what was the alternative? The hawks who are now lambasting Trump had previously cheered this reckless war of choice. What did they think would happen if the U.S. launched an unnecessary and unpopular war halfway around the world against a ruthless adversary that was fighting for its survival?
Trump’s feckless conduct — he seemed to change objectives on a daily basis — contributed to the quagmire. But not even a Churchill or a Lincoln could have defeated Iran absent a willingness to risk deploying ground troops, something for which there was simply no support back home.
Doubling down on the war, as the hawks wanted, would only have worsened its economic consequences. As Trump said on Wednesday: “If we didn’t do this deal, we could have dropped more bombs for another three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, two years,” but then “you would never have the Hormuz Strait open.”
That is the ugly truth that Trump grasped and the uber-hawks still fail to. For once, the president’s lack of consistency and conviction proved an advantage in allowing him to exit an unwinnable war rather than escalating to save face.
The proper takeaway from this mess isn’t that Trump should have continued fighting until the Iranians cried “Uncle.” That would never have happened. The right lesson is that we should never have launched this war in the first place.
It turns out that rebranding the Defense Department doesn’t actually allow it to magically bring about regime change with a few weeks of bombing. Who could have guessed?
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